Are sensitive documents safe in OneDrive?įor purposes of this article, sensitive documents refer to materials that contain either personally identifiable information ( PII), personal health information ( PHI), financial information, or data covered under FISMA and GLBA compliance requirements. The same rule holds for files shared on a OneDrive for Business account, with one exception: a policy set by an administrator determines the visibility of the data you create in the “Shared” folder. For someone else to see your data, you have to share the folder or a separate file. At this point, files are encrypted for anyone but the creator and Microsoft personnel with administrative rights. For employees saving documents on their personal accounts, all the files created or added outside of a “Shared with Me” folder are private until the user decides otherwise. One area that often breeds confusion for OneDrive users is who can access company files once they’re uploaded in the cloud.

How can businesses ensure they’re mitigating security risks, while also enabling employee access? Below we’ll discuss some of the most significant security gaps associated with OneDrive and highlight the steps organizations can take to better protect their data. The data is accessible, but not protected. While OneDrive does provide cloud storage, it doesn’t have cloud backup functionality, a critical distinction that must be made when choosing which information to upload and share.

Data theft, data loss, ransomware, and compliance violations are just a few things that organizations need to watch for as their employees increasingly rely on this application to save more and more documents to the cloud.

While OneDrive may seem like a secure cloud storage solution for companies looking to use Microsoft’s suite of business tools, many glaring security issues can expose sensitive data and personally identifiable information (PII) if proper protection protocols are ignored. One of the most popular is Microsoft’s OneDrive. With the dramatic shift toward remote workforces over the last three months, many organizations are relying more heavily on cloud tools and application suites.

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